You could write the best content in the world, but it’s all for nothing if no one opens your emails.

There are two variables that can mean the difference between your subscribers reading your emails and completely ignoring them.

Let’s talk about each of these one by one, because they are extremely important…

The 2nd Most Important Factor—Your Email Subject Line

We’ll get to the most important variable next, but the subject line of your email definitely plays a major role in how many people open the emails you carefully craft.

I typically spend an extra five to ten minutes on the subject line while writing emails. Even though they are only a few words long, it’s the first thing people see before they read or click on anything else in your email.

There are tons of formulas online for writing winning subject lines, but I’m going to narrow down what makes a great subject line:

Using FOMO.

FOMO = Fear of Missing Out.

It’s a real thing.

We all have this fear. When you consider it when writing your email copy, you’re more likely to get people to click through, primarily because of this thing called the “information gap.”

Here’s what the “information gap” is—explained by Derek Halpern over at SocialTriggers.com:

“When you create a gap between what people know, and what people want to know, they feel compelled to fill that gap.”

This is why curiosity-driven headlines work so well: People want to know what’s on the other end, so they click through to find out.

Here are some examples of headlines I’ve used in the past that employ this strategy and have some of the highest open rates:

The Top 3 Reasons Online Businesses Fail…

If I Had to Start From Scratch, This Is What I’d Do

This Is Why I Gave Up On It

As you can see, each of the above headlines makes you wonder what exactly it is that I’m talking about.

Average open rates vary from industry to industry, but typically they range between 15% to 30%, based on several studies I’ve found.

That’s only two or three people out of every ten! It’s kind of deflating to see, especially when we work so hard to grow our lists in the first place.

My email open rates range from 40% to 85% because I’m constantly tweaking and testing headlines to increase those numbers. I’ve experienced up to a 35% jump in open rates simply by changing the subject line on existing emails—it’s crazy.

Conversely, I’ve also seen massive drops in open rates while testing, too.

Subject lines are important, but they only work for opening your email. If the content inside doesn’t match the headline, or if you seem to be bait-and-switching people along the way, you’re not going to get any clicks in your emails, and you’re going to have some angry subscribers, too. They won’t be subscribers for long.

Be creative with your headlines, but make sure you’re delivering value and giving people what they want at the same time.

Now, there’s one more variable I’d like to talk about that will not only increase your open rates, but will help you earn more clicks and engagement in your emails, as well.

It’s the most underrated variable in the email marketing arena: expectation.

The #1 Most Important Factor—Expectation

When your subscribers expect great things from your emails, the headline doesn’t even matter anymore—they will open every single email and will always look forward to the next.

When you think about it, there are certain cases where you are almost always going to open an email that is being sent to you.

Some examples include when you subscribe to a new service and your username and login are enclosed, or when you get a reply from a customer support person you reached out to because of an issue you had, or even an automated service that sends you updates that you use every day, like Google Alerts or a daily SEO rank tracking update.

The common factors here are that these emails are expected by the subscribers, and people know that important information is inside.

Those emails contain stuff people asked for and need.

Most of us, however, are not providing important SEO daily rank tracking emails or replying to customer service inquiries. We ask people to subscribe to our newsletters and our information, so it’s a lot more challenging for us to have the same kind of direct expectation when it comes to the emails we send.

Challenging, but not impossible.

You can train your audience to hold expectation for your emails, and it’s done by providing massive value in the very first set of emails you send to your new subscribers.

Let’s Talk About “Providing Massive Value” Real Quick

“Provide massive value” is probably some of the most important—but also overused and non-specific—advice we hear online.

Of course we need to provide massive value, but how?!

With your emails, it’s actually fairly simple.

As soon as someone subscribes to your list, share your best, most actionable tip—something people can get a result from within five minutes of implementation.

It might seem counterintuitive, but providing small wins upfront is actually a huge deal.

In 1984, a Cornell professor wrote this when discussing the science of small wins:

“Small wins are a steady application of a small advantage… once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win.”

“Small wins fuel transformative changes by leveraging tiny advantages into patterns that convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.”

Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, has an entire chapter dedicated to the power of small wins in his book. He says that small wins form a habit and our minds go back continually to where we were rewarded, and what better habit is there to establish for your new subscriber than to open your emails?

If you want people to open your emails down the road, start by rewarding them with small victories.

Train your audience to make a connection between your emails and making progress, and you’re in for much larger open rates in all of your future emails.

Call to Action: Make the first two emails of your auto-responder series each result in a small win for your new subscriber. Make sure it takes less than five minutes to achieve the desired result.

Try it out, and you’ll find amazing results. You’ll likely see an increase in the number of people who reply to you and say thanks.

Here are some specific examples:

Smart Passive Income Newsletter 2010 to mid-2015

For a while, the very first email that new Smart Passive Income newsletter subscribers would receive was this one, which I’ve recently pulled from the series because I use it as an example so often here on the blog. Plus, I’ve recently overhauled my entire auto-responder series. But notice how quickly one can go through this example and see results. You can even try it yourself.

Hi [Name]!

So as I mentioned before, I have a lot of tips and tricks to share with you that will not be posted on the blog, and this is one of them.

If you’re struggling with figuring out what to write about, whether it’s for your next blog post, or that e-book you’re working on, try this method out.

Go to Amazon.com and type in keywords that are related to your niche. For example, if your site or e-book was about flyfishing, you’d type in flyfishing in the search field.

Locate the top books in the search results, and click on one of them. This will open up the page that shows you what it’s about, how much it costs, etc.

Look inside the cover. The cool thing that Amazon does is that it previews first few and the last few pages of most of their books. And what page is always shown when you “look inside”?

The Table Of Contents

The table of contents will show you exactly what kinds of things people are talking about within that niche. So, for our flyfishing example, in one of the top books, I see the following:

Part 1: Flyfishing

Introduction

Understanding Fly Tackle

How to Fly Cast

Fly-Fishing Tactics

The Biology of Fish

…and so on and so forth.

Now, you don’t want to just copy each of these parts of the table of contents verbatim and use them yourself. They are too general! They should, however, give you ideas on what you can write about.

So for example, here are some blog post titles or chapters of e-books that I’ve derived just from this part of the table of contents:

5 Types of Fly Fishing Tackle and the One That Works Best

What Exactly Triggers a Fish to Eat Your Artificial Lure

Why That Fish Won’t Even Look at Your Fly

The Beginner’s Guide to Casting a Fly Rod

How to Practice Fly Casting

8 Fly-Fishing Tips to Give Yourself the Best Chance to Catch Fish

Advanced Fly Tackle—For Serious Fisherman Only

You get the idea.

We’re basically getting a boost of inspiration from looking inside the covers of these books. If you think about it, a lot of money went into helping the authors figure out how to organize and determine what they were going to write about, so now you can use that as your own starting point to make even better content for your e-book or blog.

So try it out. Go to Amazon, enter a keyword, look inside the covers, find the table of contents, and get inspired.

And here are some of the responses from brand new subscribers as a result of this email:

If you’re interested in learning more about how to win with your email list, I’d love to share my free guide, Email the Smart Way: Email Archetypes So You Never Run Out of Great Emails to Send Your List. It’s 100% free. Just sign up below, and it will be automatically and instantly sent to you:

Still hungry for more information about email marketing? Check out some of the other content here on the Smart Passive Income blog.

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Love this, Pat. I teach Online Music Marketing for Berklee Online (part of Berklee College of Music). As more and more music consumers turn to streaming, it becomes critical that music artists build, maintain, and engage mailing list of fans. Once I get them to understand the importance of an email list — they ask about how to get fans to open their emails. So, thank you for providing some tips that I can use when teaching them. I’ve also been exploring whether an autoresponder series would make sense for a band. I’ve never seen a musical artist make use of one, at least beyond the ‘welcome’ email.

Chandler, your comment caught my attention because of the Berklee reference, and my imagination with your pondering the sense of an autoresponder for a band. When I switch out “opportunity” for “sense,” a light bulb switches on:
*A meet-the-band series, in which emails are devoted to introducing each band member.
*A get-inspired-too series (from bands who write original music), in which emails are devoted to highlighting where inspiration for specific songs came from.
Those came with little thought, maybe because as a music lover, those are things I’d be entertained and intrigued by.
Peace. ~Ellen

Hey Ellen: I’m a singer/songwriter who’s doing exactly this with an autoresponder on my website. Thanks so much for laying this out – it’s great to get an individual music lover’s perspective and validation of this whole concept!

Jade Barham

The autoresponders could include a link to a bonus EP, and then tell the bands/musicians story over the course of several emails, an insiders look, and through the course of it introduce material as it is released, including links to download/purchase. It’s quite likely someone has bought one EP/album, and could be interested in buying other material.

Gayneté Edwards

Great post Pat.

We must also ensure our first line is stellar and pulls the subscriber to want to know more as they can often see a preview of the email on their phones or provider screen. An example would be something along the lines of, “Now [name], you’re going to love this super easy tip to increase your monthly income …”

I also find the more niche your audience, the higher the open rate. My main list (24% average open) isn’t nearly as responsive as my niche list (60% open rate).

Hi, i’ve just found your site and i’m so impressed about the quality of its content. This blog post was so easy to read that people like me (not a very good english speaker) could understand. Thank you. You’ve got a new reader from Brazil.

arun

hii Great post
i am newbie in blogging this tips will help me to get more subscribers thanks for sharing

Hey, this is a great article. I love your use of marketing psychology in your recommendation to create a small win (5min to accomplish) for your email newsletter opt-ins, and the concept of fear of missing out to increase CTRs.

The example you provided made me feel like I got a small win by reading your article. Keyword + Amazon Search bar = Inspiration in the form of chapters and section names – Genius Idea – Hat tip to you sir. Also, what is the industry standard for A/B testing email subject lines?

Hi Pat, this is really an awesome article, you have really touched all the important points in email marketing, I too do this and always wanted to know that how I can grow myself better and more efficient. I thanks you for all your efforts which you put in this article to enlighten us.

Jackie

Thanks for the advice-I think the fear of missing out is huge and can really be a game-changer in terms of email marketing. I have a big email list (relatively) of 1300 but I’m just in the process of going back through my auto-responder series and upgrading it.

Hi Pat,
Again, some actionable information. A small treasure chest.
Especially the “tip” that should be included in the newsletter.
The advice from Charles Duhigg, concerning the importance of “small wins,” which sets itself up for more small wins and eventually enable bigger change, is priceless.
Thanks for the post, Pat!

Mary Neto

I can never get the proper content in order to get those to open? I think that this article will be helpful.

hannah edia

This is a great article Pat and you always write great articles, so no surprise. I still remember getting that Amazon email like yesterday, and visiting Amazon immediately to put it into action. Thanks Pat

Very helpful article for me. I like your simplicity in writing and the way you write every post thank you from – http://www.financeqlub.com

Alex Craig

FOMO. That really does exist. We all have it. That is why it is hard to unplug from social media. We are afraid we will miss the latest meme or something.

For me the biggest reason I do not open emails could fall under expectation. The deeper reason is that it is not an email I feel like I need to read. I do not feel it reaches a burning point or desire in my life.

If it does not seem like it will answer my question to my latest desire, then I delete it right away.

Evan

Excellent post.

It’s all about providing your subscribers with massive value. Once they see you as a leader and authority figure that can provide them with killer content, the money will roll in. Treat your subscribers like gold, you’ll be thankful you did.

Reading things like this, with examples and all, is so inspiring. It makes me want to set up a auto-responder-series at once, but I think I’ll need to do some work on what kind of actonable advice I could give if I do that… Something on art, craft and creativity… I don’t think it is as easy as giving advice on blogging, but I am sure I’ll figure something fun out. Thanks for the help!

William Bloomberg

I have a website http://onenbh.com on home and office security, I want to track my customer email and awake them about my offer but I scared this process. Anyone can tell me easy way to do it.